Denver Broncos / NFL

Town pays tribute to slain coach

Son implores community to continue rebuilding

Al Kerns, one of the co-coaches at Aplington-Parkersburg, is comforted during the funeral for slain coach Ed Thomas.
(Rodney White, The Des Moines Register
)

PARKERSBURG, Iowa — As the funeral procession for Ed Thomas pulled onto Miners Street on Monday afternoon, headed for Oak Hill Cemetery, both sides of the street were lined with people, friends of the longtime, beloved coach at Aplington-Parkersburg High School, as well as those whose lives he influenced from afar. There were coaches and players from opposing teams, the latter dressed in football jerseys from their respective schools.

As the vehicles crawled up the street, a few onlookers raised their arms. Soon, almost everyone in the crowd was doing likewise, extending their hands to the sky, four fingers waving in the soft breeze. That was the symbol Thomas used on Friday nights, when his Falcons stood along the sideline before the final quarter of play.

"Finish the job."

The slogan applied not only to the A-P players, but to a community that only 13 months ago was rocked by a devastating tornado. The tragedy forced a massive rebuilding effort, one that was spearheaded by the 58-year-old Thomas and made easier by a football team that competed just hundreds of yards from where they currently stood, playing on Ed Thomas Field, in an area known locally as the Sacred Acre.

About an hour earlier, Pastor Brad Zinnecker was ending the service for Thomas at the First Congregational Church, a ceremony that culminated nearly a week of sorrow resulting from the slaying of the coach, shot to death last Wednesday by a former player.

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As Zinnecker began to introduce the final hymn, Aaron Thomas, one of the coach's two sons, unexpectedly stood up, went to the pulpit and challenged Parkersburg to add yet another layer to his father's trademark gesture.

"There's no way my father would have wanted this to drag out for five days," Aaron Thomas said. "You can be sad for the rest of the day today, but come tomorrow, when you wake up, it's time to get going.

"There's not one of us here who can make up for what my father did, but this can be a better place without Ed Thomas. But for that to happen, it has to come from each one of us. There's a lot of work to be done in this town. My dad wasn't taken from us before the tornado, and he got us close afterwards. Now, the challenge is, can we finish this town and get it to where we need to be?"

That will be difficult without Ed Thomas, who coached football and taught at the school for 34 years.

On Monday, thousands came out to pay their respects, much larger in number than the town of 1,800. Among them was Broncos center Casey Wiegmann, one of four of Thomas' former players to go on to the NFL, each of whom served as pallbearers.

Not only was the church overflowing, three rooms in the basement were packed, as was the Veterans Memorial Building, where mourners could watch on a closed-circuit television feed.

After the services, the town gathered outside the center, ostensibly for lunch. In reality, for many of the people there, it was another chance to try to make sense of what happened.

Mark Becker, a former A-P football player, has been charged with first-degree murder; police have not yet offered a motive.

"You have good days and moments, but really every day is a good day. That's the way Coach would want it," Wiegmann said. "It's hard to get a grasp on what happened and why, and I don't really want to know, but you look at Aaron, who's Ed to a T, and what he said about moving on, it's pretty powerful."

After a twister that killed six residents hit Parkersburg last year, Ed Thomas had some of his players assist with the burials, telling the team that the tragedy would provide a firsthand example of how life works. That lesson would be borne out throughout the year. Although it seemed like a longshot, Thomas vowed that the Falcons would play their home games in 2008 on their own field. And although there was wreckage and debris strewn all around, the coach worked tirelessly to make it happen.

When Al Kerns, one of Thomas' longtime friends and assistant coaches at A-P, delivered a eulogy Monday, he placed a miniature John Deere lawn tractor in front of him, the sight of it, he said, reminded him of Thomas and made him smile.

"He was clairvoyant," Kerns joked. "No matter where he was at, he could just sense when a weed had grown on the field, and if he could, he'd get right over there and take care of it."

The Falcons spent virtually the entire season as the state's top-ranked Class 1-A team, but lost a quarterfinal tournament game to Emmetsburg 14-6, denying Thomas a chance for a third state championship.

"It's hard to believe that was his last team," said Michael Wiegmann (no relation to Casey), one of the captains of the 2008 squad and another pallbearer. "I was thinking about that on the ride over to the cemetery. If we had scored from the half-yard line, we would have won, and we might have given him his last title.

"But even so, he was prouder of us after we lost. He knew we had worked hard all year for him, and that's all he ever asked for, for us to work hard."

And, even in death, Thomas' influence remains alive here.

"Ever since we got the news, Ed has been in my ear," Kerns said. "I don't know if I've really been communicating with him, or if the words he's said are just so strong that they live on inside me.

"I don't know how any of that stuff works. All I know is that I'm still listening to him."